AoFrio’s Chief Growth Officer, David Burden, takes you inside the evolution of AoFrio INSIDE— our award-winning initiative designed to slash carbon emissions from commercial refrigeration.
The inspiration behind AoFrio® INSIDE™ was deeply rooted in our commitment to our company’s values: explore, thrive, and create a better world together.
Recognizing that commercial refrigeration is responsible for 10% of CO2 emissions from electricity consumption, we realized that AoFrio had the potential to drive significant change.
We began by testing the impact of replacing standard components in a commonly used cooler. Collaborating with Mexican OEM Criotec, we conducted initial trials that replaced shaded pole motors, standard compressors, and mechanical thermostats with Wellington’s ECR 2 motors, a reputable variable-speed compressor, and the AoFrio SCS intelligent electronic controller. The results were revolutionary—energy consumption dropped by 54%.
This success led to the creation of AoFrio INSIDE, which highlights the transformative efficiency and carbon reduction benefits our components bring to refrigeration systems.
Buoyed by these results, we entered AoFrio INSIDE into the 2023 Bier Coalition Cool Challenge. Winning the award for Incremental Change confirmed that we were on the right path.
Further advancements were made when we rolled out new firmware for our intelligent SCS Controller, enhancing control over various brands of variable-speed compressors. Reports from our OEM partners indicated even greater energy efficiency.
To ensure transparency, we enlisted Europe’s most trusted refrigeration testing facility, Re/genT, in the Netherlands, to conduct independent tests. Their findings were extraordinary, revealing a further increase in energy savings to 64% over the baseline cooler when AoFrio INSIDE was paired with a variable speed compressor.
To dive deeper into these results, request the Re/genT independent report.
However, we knew that hardware upgrades were only half the battle.
With data collected from our electronic controllers since 2016 and over 2.7 million connected devices, we possessed the world’s largest cold drink cooler performance dataset—a goldmine for future AI modelling.
Our engineering team enhanced their machine-learning algorithms, uncovering that many coolers in large fleets were consuming far more energy than necessary. No existing system flagged this issue, leading to increased carbon emissions and wasted energy.
Managing fleets of over 100,000 coolers spread across vast regions is challenging. But we knew that if we could solve this challenge, we could significantly accelerate our customers' progress towards achieving Net Zero carbon emissions.
Our AI-driven insights revealed that coolers often appeared to function normally while consuming excessive energy due to issues like dirty condensers or frequent freeze-ups—issues no one noticed.
Customers can now track improvements, identify underperforming assets, and take timely action to reduce carbon emissions and energy costs. Our advanced energy module goes even further, enabling customers to drill down to the performance of individual coolers.
Soon, AoFrio energy insights will proactively alert customers to assets that require review to optimize carbon emissions and accelerate their journey towards Net Zero. Our AoFrio INSIDE bundle includes the AoFrio Gateway—a cellular-connected hub that connects your fleet to the cloud, allowing many tasks previously requiring a service call to be executed remotely.
Imagine the potential carbon and cost savings if you could reduce service calls by 20% through remote management. This is no longer a dream—AoFrio will gradually roll out these features through our new AI-enabled AoFrio iQ Platform.
Next Time: We’ll explore the 64% energy savings in more detail and discuss how AoFrio INSIDE applies to cold drink equipment that already incorporates advanced energy-saving components.
Request a copy of the Re/genT report
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